As parents well know, the holiday season is both incredibly exciting and potentially overwhelming for kids, sometimes all rolled together into one. At gatherings with families and friends, expectations about affection, attention, and teasing can create unnecessary stress and discomfort.

What other child abuse survivors say about why they didn’t tell is sadly similar to what Ralph West says in the interview about his experience. “I was freaked out. You don’t know what to do. Are you going to blow the lid? All you want to do is pretend it didn’t happen. You want to hide and bury it.”It is terribly sad that this happened – and even more sad that, even all these years and stories later, too many kids today STILL don’t know what to do.

Bullying is an ongoing emergency, and emergencies require urgent action. Each week, Kidpower will be featuring an Emergency Action you can take to help protect the young people in your life from bullying.